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In Atlanta we are recovering from one of worst winter storms in many years. Weather events are financially devastating for a medical practice. Revenue completely stops while expenses continue without interruption. Today for the first time we saw patients in the office on a Saturday to recover a little.

During our 3 snow days this past week I decided to take on John Lynn’s challenge regarding what I would do if the Meaningful Use (MU) incentive money disappeared. There has been a range of responses including one person who wouldn’t change a thing about MU. However, recent data continue to support my long-held opinion that MU has been harmful to health IT and the EMR cause.

Think about where we were before MU was conceived. Six years ago the NEJM study cited by the designers of MU showed a 4% EMR adoption rate. Among EMR users the vast majority (72%-96%) reported a positive effect of EMR on patient care. Among EMR users physician satisfaction was 93%. Among EMR non-users, the major reasons for not getting an EMR included cost (66%), uncertainty regarding the return on investment (50%), and loss of productivity during implementation (41%).

Six years later, what has MU done for EMRs? Medical Economics recently released an EHR survey of 967 physicians polled in late 2013 with very disturbing results:

70% did not feel their EHR investment was worth the cost and the effort

73% would not re-purchase their current system

69% report coordination of care has not improved

65% do not believe EHR has improved quality of care. 45% believe EHR has made patient care worse

Lack of system functionality was the most common complaint among EHR users (67%)

45% of all physicians spent over $100,000 on EHR and 77% of the “largest” practices spent over $200,000. It is unclear whether this is the total practice cost or cost per physician. Increased staff costs and loss of productivity were also cited as major issues.

Also telling are data reported by CMS last May that a staggering 17% of all providers who attested for the 90 day period required for MU Stage 1 / Year 1 (2011) did not participate the following year. A CMS survey of these “non-returning providers” (NRPs) showed many of them gave up for reasons related to the MU program as well as reasons related to dissatisfaction with their EMRs.

Analysis of these 3 studies suggests that the satisfaction rate among EMR users has fallen from over 90% to about 30% over the past 6 years. The proportion of providers that believe EMR improves quality of care has fallen from 82% in 2008 to 35% in the 2013 ME survey. The misgivings of non-EMR-users in the NEJM 2008 study were proven valid among the dissatisfied EMR-users in the ME 2013 survey: high cost, poor return on investment and loss of productivity. Even 5 figure financial incentives can’t get MU / EMR participation beyond a very short time of 90 days.

How could EMR’s reputation among EMR users fall so far? The Meaningful Use program is solely responsible.

Go back to 2008 for a moment. Had the health IT market been left undisturbed, EMR vendors would have engaged their existing base of satisfied customers in order to improve their products and sell to new customers. This base of early EMR adopters was unique and special. Our practice was among those that had a fully functional EMR in 2007-2008. We shared a vision and saw the potential for information technology to improve health care. We had both the IT resources and the will to work hundreds of extra hours to build effective EMR systems from products that were almost useless as they came “out of the box.” We willingly accepted that proposition.

In 2008 the early adopters would have gladly offered their own practices as examples to demonstrate the value of EMR and help their vendors sell to new customers. This slow, evolutionary growth would have created a stable environment that allowed the health care system to safely assimilate the cultural and operational changes that EMR brings. This environment would have also supported stable evolution and improvement of EMR products. The result would have been modest but steady growth in the EMR market for decades to come.

But thanks to MU this never happened. Replacement of stable, natural market forces with MU incentives drove immediate, explosive short-term growth in the EMR market. But these MU-driven EMR purchasers are not like the practices before 2008 that freely chose to purchase a system. These practices had decided against EMR initially, at least partly because they lacked the IT resources to make EMR work for them. MU coerced them to purchase EMR against their better judgment.

I have spoken with many of these physicians. They do not share the inspiration and vision of the early adopters. They are rightly unhappy and cynical, forced by MU to spend huge amounts of money on unproven, underdeveloped EMR products that they did not want and were not prepared to properly use. To these practices the question of EMR’s potential is irrelevant. In their minds MU (and by association EMRs) lives next to HIPAA, SGR and RAC audits as another method for the government to intimidate doctors and intrude upon their practices.

The MU program gave EMR vendors what they wanted – legislation requiring hundreds of thousands of providers to buy EMR products, with no need to prove that those products do anything useful. But here’s the bad news: the Feds got what they wanted as well. Through MU they created an EMR industry that is dependent on government incentives and penalties to maintain a stream of new customers. This gives them complete control of the EMR market. There is more bad news. MU also destroyed the base of satisfied EMR customers from 2008, replacing it with a much larger base of unhappy, resentful customers.

So what happens as MU payments decrease with each passing year as MU requirements go up? Who can argue that the market won’t collapse without another EMR stimulus package? John Lynn’s question is appropriate and timely. MU incentives will indeed disappear over the next couple of years. How the EMR market will survive is not clear.

Dr. Michael J. Koriwchak received his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine in 1988. He completed both his Internship in General Surgery and Residency in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Koriwchak continued at Vanderbilt for a fellowship in Laryngology and Care of the Professional Voice. He is board certified by the American Board of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.
After training Dr. Koriwchak moved to Atlanta in 1995 to become one of the original physicians in Ear, Nose and Throat of Georgia. He has built a thriving practice in Laryngology, Care of the Professional Voice, Thyroid/Parathyroid Surgery, Endoscopic Sinus Surgery and General Otolaryngology. A singer himself, many of his patients are people who depend on their voice for their careers, including some well-known entertainers. Dr. Koriwchak has also performed thousands of thyroid, parathyroid and head and neck cancer operations.
Dr. Koriwchak has been working with information technology since 1977. While an undergraduate at Bucknell University he taught a computer-programming course. In medical school he wrote his own software for his laboratory research. In the 1990’s he adapted generic forms software to create one the first electronic prescription applications. Soon afterward he wrote his own chart note templates using visual BASIC script. In 2003 he became the physician champion for ENT of Georgia’s EMR implementation project. This included not only design and implementation strategy but also writing code. In 2008 the EMR implementation earned the e-Technology award from the Medical Association of Georgia.
With 7 years EMR experience, 18 years in private medical practice and over 35 years of IT experience, Dr. Koriwchak seeks opportunities to merge the information technology and medical communities, bringing information technology to health care.

I recently reviewed the Epocrates 2013 Mobile Trends report. The study has a somewhat unusual participant profile, consisting only of primary care, 3 medical specialties and no surgical specialties; nonetheless the observations are probably close to the mark and are consistent with my experience with my first tablet a couple of years ago.

I purchased an iPad within a couple of months of the introduction of the first model thinking it was perfect for EMR use in my office. I abandoned it after a couple of months when I discovered several shortcomings. First, the first iPad was too heavy to hold by the edge and had to be held by a fully supinated hand (totally flat palm facing up). Try that for 5 minutes and see how your forearm feels. The first iPad was also too big to put in a physician’s white coat pocket. And the screen resolution of the first iPad models was not good enough to display a busy EMR screen. But the biggest drawback was that the early remote desktop apps did not work very well.

The iPad mini addresses all four of these issues. The Mini is small enough to fit in a white coat pocket with the standard magnetic cover in place. It is easily and comfortably held by its edge. It needs a Retina screen badly but the display is better than the original iPad and is (barely) adequate for my 50-year-old eyes to see. And remote desktop apps have come a long way. It appears that similar advances have been made in tablets from other manufacturers as well.

I was therefore surprised to learn from the Epocrates study that although a majority of providers (53%) use tablets for patient care related activities, only a small portion (2%) use tablets for actual patient care record keeping in an EMR. So I thought it would be interesting to outline my current methods of using a tablet that put me in the 2% category as well as the 53%:

Entering data into my EMR via a Remote Desktop app. There are important lessons here. Don’t expect to stick a tablet in the physician’s hand and have it work like magic. Our office workflow is designed to optimize the physician / tablet combination. I use the tablet for only 2 data fields in EMR: assessment and coding (CPT and ICD). The office staff enters all the other parts of the note and initiates treatment workflow through the EMR at the physician’s direction. After the patient is seen I review all parts of the note (on a laptop or desktop), make additions / corrections, and sign it.

Cloud based voice-to-text. This takes the tablet from merely useful to spectacular. There are 3 characteristics of Apple’s built-in cloud-based speech recognition that make it comparable to the Dragon software I have used in various forms for over 10 years: 1. It is embedded seamlessly into the soft keyboard, 2. An inexpensive external microphone plugged into the headphone /microphone jack raises transcription accuracy tremendously, and 3. It works well with Remote Desktop, eliminating the need for a “dictation box” or other similar workaround. These attributes make up for its most serious drawback, the lack of a medical (or at least customizable) vocabulary. At the moment I have the right people talking to each other to address that problem.

Hospital EMR. Our hospital is still in the implementation phase of a new Cerner system. I am still learning the system myself but my initial experience using the system on my tablet using Citrix Receiver has been very positive.

Patient education. LUMA, a product of Eyemaginations, is a very nice product for showing surgical patients the complex head and neck anatomy of their diagnosis and/or proposed surgical procedure. There are both online and iPad versions available. I can switch back and forth between EMR and LUMA without losing the Remote Desktop connection.

Medical imaging. I can’t load an image disk directly onto my tablet but I can load it onto my desktop and take a photo with my tablet to review relevant images with patients. I have tinkered with some apps that allow me to draw on the image to help educate patients. Still looking for a way to conveniently reduce the file size to facilitate copy-pasting into EMR notes.

Literature searches in the exam room. Not glamorous but helpful, most commonly to review medication side effects.

I think that is a pretty complete use of the tablet for the physician. No doubt new uses will appear before long.

Dr. Michael J. Koriwchak received his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine in 1988. He completed both his Internship in General Surgery and Residency in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Koriwchak continued at Vanderbilt for a fellowship in Laryngology and Care of the Professional Voice. He is board certified by the American Board of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.
After training Dr. Koriwchak moved to Atlanta in 1995 to become one of the original physicians in Ear, Nose and Throat of Georgia. He has built a thriving practice in Laryngology, Care of the Professional Voice, Thyroid/Parathyroid Surgery, Endoscopic Sinus Surgery and General Otolaryngology. A singer himself, many of his patients are people who depend on their voice for their careers, including some well-known entertainers. Dr. Koriwchak has also performed thousands of thyroid, parathyroid and head and neck cancer operations.
Dr. Koriwchak has been working with information technology since 1977. While an undergraduate at Bucknell University he taught a computer-programming course. In medical school he wrote his own software for his laboratory research. In the 1990’s he adapted generic forms software to create one the first electronic prescription applications. Soon afterward he wrote his own chart note templates using visual BASIC script. In 2003 he became the physician champion for ENT of Georgia’s EMR implementation project. This included not only design and implementation strategy but also writing code. In 2008 the EMR implementation earned the e-Technology award from the Medical Association of Georgia.
With 7 years EMR experience, 18 years in private medical practice and over 35 years of IT experience, Dr. Koriwchak seeks opportunities to merge the information technology and medical communities, bringing information technology to health care.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending my first mHealth Summit in Washington, D.C.

The tone and rhetoric of this year’s meeting seemed a great deal different than what I read about last year’s meeting. Gone was the doctor bashing by keynote speakers. Instead we heard talks like the one from NIH director Dr. Francis Collins. His literature review showed there are only 30 published, randomized, and controlled studies of mHealth technology. Of those studies only 6 showed that mHealth showed a statistically significant improvement in patient care. He admonished the audience to subject mHealth technology to the same rigorous, statistically relevant testing that is given to other potential advances in health care.

Bravo. Music to my ears. That is something everyone in mHealth needs to hear.

Other speakers and panelists shared similar views. I was also pleased to hear several acknowledgements of the critical role physicians must take in mHealth. Until that point I had wondered if some mHealth proponents thought they needed doctors at all.

I was delighted to meet Arthur Lane, Director of Mobile Healthcare Solutions at Verizon Wireless. Readers of my blog may recall I (unfavorably) reviewed Verizon’s home monitoring program for congestive heart failure (CHF) patients. After discussing with Arthur my concerns about the program I realized we were very much on the same page. He is aware of the literature, including the Yale study showing no benefit for home monitoring of CHF patients. He has a very grounded approach to solving the issues raised by the medical literature. That conversation changed my opinion of the project. I like what they are doing.

I was also a panelist in a discussion entitled “Converting to mHealth: How to Drive Change”. We had a very spirited discussion before a standing-room-only crowd. I was very impressed with the moderator and the other panelists as well as the questions from the audience. Much of the discussion addressed the relationship of doctors to health IT folks and the relative role of each in driving mHealth forward. The discussion demonstrated that this is a complex issue with emotions on both sides. I’ll have more to say about this in a future post.

It was gratifying to come home with my faith as least partially restored. mHealth has matured over the past year. And perhaps my own feelings about mHealth have matured as well.

Dr. Michael J. Koriwchak received his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine in 1988. He completed both his Internship in General Surgery and Residency in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Koriwchak continued at Vanderbilt for a fellowship in Laryngology and Care of the Professional Voice. He is board certified by the American Board of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.
After training Dr. Koriwchak moved to Atlanta in 1995 to become one of the original physicians in Ear, Nose and Throat of Georgia. He has built a thriving practice in Laryngology, Care of the Professional Voice, Thyroid/Parathyroid Surgery, Endoscopic Sinus Surgery and General Otolaryngology. A singer himself, many of his patients are people who depend on their voice for their careers, including some well-known entertainers. Dr. Koriwchak has also performed thousands of thyroid, parathyroid and head and neck cancer operations.
Dr. Koriwchak has been working with information technology since 1977. While an undergraduate at Bucknell University he taught a computer-programming course. In medical school he wrote his own software for his laboratory research. In the 1990’s he adapted generic forms software to create one the first electronic prescription applications. Soon afterward he wrote his own chart note templates using visual BASIC script. In 2003 he became the physician champion for ENT of Georgia’s EMR implementation project. This included not only design and implementation strategy but also writing code. In 2008 the EMR implementation earned the e-Technology award from the Medical Association of Georgia.
With 7 years EMR experience, 18 years in private medical practice and over 35 years of IT experience, Dr. Koriwchak seeks opportunities to merge the information technology and medical communities, bringing information technology to health care.

The health IT community is well aware of the dangers of cloning notes in an electronic medical record. I include myself in that group. Until recently I prided myself for doing a good job, both in our EMR design and in my own personal practice, of using just the right amount of automation in our documentation workflow. Two recent events showed me that I still have some work to do.

The first event occurred a few weeks ago when I was reviewing some records. One patient note documented an enlarged salivary gland containing a stone. That would be fine except for one small detail – I had removed that gland one week prior to the date of the note! My nurse had created that note. A conversation with her revealed she thought she was doing the right thing by always clicking the “previous finding” button, which I had programmed myself. My nurse is extremely bright; this was my fault for not training her on this issue. I had also signed that note. So it was my fault twice. After a 30 second conversation with my nurse it has not happened since.

The second event was when an attorney interviewed me regarding one of my patients. I was a treating physician in a malpractice case (I am not the defendant thankfully). The attorney wanted to know if, in my opinion, the physician defendant had met the standard of care in treating the patient despite the adverse outcome.

This was a high-risk case for note cloning; the patient had multiple abnormal neurologic findings that were stable over time. In reviewing my records I was satisfied that my notes were accurate, complete and original for every visit. I avoided cloning those abnormal but stable findings by describing the same exam but using slightly different wording at each visit. How else do you avoid cloning? But the attorney pounced on my small changes in description, trying to establish a trend in my notes that the patient was getting worse. I explained the cloning issue to him, and he understood…. I think. Nonetheless I felt somewhat uncomfortable defending my documentation, and I was not even the defendant. In trying to avoid cloning notes I had stepped right into another problem.

This issue is huge in my practice. I have a large volume of head and neck cancer patients. The essence of caring for them properly is to monitor them for changes in their abnormal – but stable – physical findings. A recurrence of cancer might manifest as a subtle change in one of these findings.

How do you document that an examination is stable and unchanging, but change your wording enough to document that you actually examined the patient at every visit? We do not yet have the cloning issue figured out.

Dr. Michael J. Koriwchak received his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine in 1988. He completed both his Internship in General Surgery and Residency in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Koriwchak continued at Vanderbilt for a fellowship in Laryngology and Care of the Professional Voice. He is board certified by the American Board of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.
After training Dr. Koriwchak moved to Atlanta in 1995 to become one of the original physicians in Ear, Nose and Throat of Georgia. He has built a thriving practice in Laryngology, Care of the Professional Voice, Thyroid/Parathyroid Surgery, Endoscopic Sinus Surgery and General Otolaryngology. A singer himself, many of his patients are people who depend on their voice for their careers, including some well-known entertainers. Dr. Koriwchak has also performed thousands of thyroid, parathyroid and head and neck cancer operations.
Dr. Koriwchak has been working with information technology since 1977. While an undergraduate at Bucknell University he taught a computer-programming course. In medical school he wrote his own software for his laboratory research. In the 1990’s he adapted generic forms software to create one the first electronic prescription applications. Soon afterward he wrote his own chart note templates using visual BASIC script. In 2003 he became the physician champion for ENT of Georgia’s EMR implementation project. This included not only design and implementation strategy but also writing code. In 2008 the EMR implementation earned the e-Technology award from the Medical Association of Georgia.
With 7 years EMR experience, 18 years in private medical practice and over 35 years of IT experience, Dr. Koriwchak seeks opportunities to merge the information technology and medical communities, bringing information technology to health care.

As we approach the midpoint of 2012 our practice will complete 7 years of electronic medical records. Just like a musical instrument, we will never have EMR fully mastered, but our skills and wisdom continue to grow slowly with time. Over the past several weeks one lesson is becoming clear.

To this point I have equally supported 2 types of workflow for the exam room. The first involves the physician working solo in the exam room with a laptop or tablet computer. The medical assistant remains at the nurses’ station to support workflow. In our financially strained environment we can’t afford to add another medical assistant to put in the exam room with the physician. In this model the EMR enhances the physican’s documentation and workflow control capabilities and eliminates the need for an assistant in the exam room.

In the second workflow the doc never touches the computer. Instead a medical assistant or nurse accompanies the doc to the exam room and documents on a laptop. After capturing the results of the physician interview and the exam findings, the assistant documents workflow in the EMR. The doc uses the workflow engine to initiate and control workflow. It works well but carries the expense of an additional assistant, some $40k per year including benefits.

Over the past year I have been blessed with 2 exceptionally talented RNs who are both outstanding clinicians and savvy computer users. The first of them will be going out on maternity leave soon, so the second was hired. For several weeks they have both been working and training together so I have had the (expensive) luxury of having an extra assistant to bring to the exam room. Thanks to them I have come to realize there is no reason for me to operate the workflow engine. For most patients the RN can listen to my conversation with the patient and initiate the treatment workflow via the workflow engine.

By allowing the RN / assistant to operate the workflow engine we eliminate the need to keep an assistant at the nurses station and this eliminate the additional expense.

We have also replaced our web portal vendor after several frustrating, unsuccessful years. I am very excited about the Intuit product. Although I have been wrong many times about similar technologies in the past I remain hopeful that that the new portal will be attractive to patients. If that happens we will finally be able to automate several workflows and get a measurable return on investment on the portal itself.

Combining a successful web portal with a sophisticated workflow engine operated by staff holds the promise of taking our practice to the “next level” with our EMR. This will allow us to automate data input, workflow management and patient communication. This is very important to physicians. As a group we docs see EMR as something we constantly put resources into but rarely get anything back out. This would be a big step past that barrier.

Dr. Michael J. Koriwchak received his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine in 1988. He completed both his Internship in General Surgery and Residency in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Koriwchak continued at Vanderbilt for a fellowship in Laryngology and Care of the Professional Voice. He is board certified by the American Board of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.
After training Dr. Koriwchak moved to Atlanta in 1995 to become one of the original physicians in Ear, Nose and Throat of Georgia. He has built a thriving practice in Laryngology, Care of the Professional Voice, Thyroid/Parathyroid Surgery, Endoscopic Sinus Surgery and General Otolaryngology. A singer himself, many of his patients are people who depend on their voice for their careers, including some well-known entertainers. Dr. Koriwchak has also performed thousands of thyroid, parathyroid and head and neck cancer operations.
Dr. Koriwchak has been working with information technology since 1977. While an undergraduate at Bucknell University he taught a computer-programming course. In medical school he wrote his own software for his laboratory research. In the 1990’s he adapted generic forms software to create one the first electronic prescription applications. Soon afterward he wrote his own chart note templates using visual BASIC script. In 2003 he became the physician champion for ENT of Georgia’s EMR implementation project. This included not only design and implementation strategy but also writing code. In 2008 the EMR implementation earned the e-Technology award from the Medical Association of Georgia.
With 7 years EMR experience, 18 years in private medical practice and over 35 years of IT experience, Dr. Koriwchak seeks opportunities to merge the information technology and medical communities, bringing information technology to health care.

Despite the success of information technology (IT) in transforming many parts of the economy, the health care sector has proven itself immune to the seduction of smart phones and iPads. This is puzzling at first glance. It is certainly not due to any shortage of health IT products. The problem appears to be on the demand side.

A recent article by Olga Khazan in The Washington Post provides some explanation. She reports on the third annual mHealth Summit, held earlier this month in Washington D.C. The event has attracted such notables as Bill Gates and Ted Turner, according to the mHealth website. The piece laments the “enthusiasm gap” between Health IT startup companies offering dozens of miracle products and those darn stick-in-the-mud physicians who just can’t get with the program. But meetings like the mHealth Summit actually hurt the movement of Health IT that they profess to support.

The poster child for Ms. Khazan’s article is Dr. Eric Topol, one of the Summit’s keynote speakers. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius joined Dr. Topol behind the podium. Together they offered Health IT Utopia – where “you can take a video of a rash on your foot and get a diagnosis…without making a doctor’s appointment.” Then they criticized practicing physicians using the same old Obamacare propaganda. Ms. Sebelius continued, “Americans still live sicker and die sooner than many of the people in other nations…Healthcare has stubbornly held on to its cabinet and hanging files.” Dr. Topol called the medical community “ossified” regarding the adoption of health information technology. The author starts the online post-article comment thread herself with the question, “How do we encourage doctors to be more open to these technologies?”

This kind of meeting is common in the Health IT (HIT) community. A bunch of self-described HIT experts get together, pump each other up about the absolute perfection of their products, and then start bashing physicians because – literally and figuratively – we aren’t buying it. At similar meetings I have heard HIT people brag about walking out on their doctor the minute he pulled out a paper prescription pad. Doctors are called fearful, stupid, or rich fat-cats protecting their turf. Now thanks to our “colleague” Dr. Topol we can add, “ossified” to the list of unflattering terms. It comes as no surprise that the government is happy to join in the sing-along. It is a free opportunity to serve Obamacare Kool-Aid.

I am a dedicated supporter of HIT. Our practice’s EMR implementation reached a reasonable level of maturity long before Obamacare, HITECH incentives, and Ms. Sebelius came along. We became Meaningful Use – compliant the first of October. I believe in the potential of HIT to revolutionize the practice of medicine by reducing costs and improving efficiency and quality of care. But I do not believe the HIT community is on a course that will take us to that vision.

Dr. Michael J. Koriwchak received his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine in 1988. He completed both his Internship in General Surgery and Residency in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Koriwchak continued at Vanderbilt for a fellowship in Laryngology and Care of the Professional Voice. He is board certified by the American Board of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.
After training Dr. Koriwchak moved to Atlanta in 1995 to become one of the original physicians in Ear, Nose and Throat of Georgia. He has built a thriving practice in Laryngology, Care of the Professional Voice, Thyroid/Parathyroid Surgery, Endoscopic Sinus Surgery and General Otolaryngology. A singer himself, many of his patients are people who depend on their voice for their careers, including some well-known entertainers. Dr. Koriwchak has also performed thousands of thyroid, parathyroid and head and neck cancer operations.
Dr. Koriwchak has been working with information technology since 1977. While an undergraduate at Bucknell University he taught a computer-programming course. In medical school he wrote his own software for his laboratory research. In the 1990’s he adapted generic forms software to create one the first electronic prescription applications. Soon afterward he wrote his own chart note templates using visual BASIC script. In 2003 he became the physician champion for ENT of Georgia’s EMR implementation project. This included not only design and implementation strategy but also writing code. In 2008 the EMR implementation earned the e-Technology award from the Medical Association of Georgia.
With 7 years EMR experience, 18 years in private medical practice and over 35 years of IT experience, Dr. Koriwchak seeks opportunities to merge the information technology and medical communities, bringing information technology to health care.

Dr. Michael J. Koriwchak received his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine in 1988. He completed both his Internship in General Surgery and Residency in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Dr. Koriwchak continued at Vanderbilt for a fellowship in Laryngology and Care of the Professional Voice. He is board certified by the American Board of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.
After training Dr. Koriwchak moved to Atlanta in 1995 to become one of the original physicians in Ear, Nose and Throat of Georgia. He has built a thriving practice in Laryngology, Care of the Professional Voice, Thyroid/Parathyroid Surgery, Endoscopic Sinus Surgery and General Otolaryngology. A singer himself, many of his patients are people who depend on their voice for their careers, including some well-known entertainers. Dr. Koriwchak has also performed thousands of thyroid, parathyroid and head and neck cancer operations.
Dr. Koriwchak has been working with information technology since 1977. While an undergraduate at Bucknell University he taught a computer-programming course. In medical school he wrote his own software for his laboratory research. In the 1990’s he adapted generic forms software to create one the first electronic prescription applications. Soon afterward he wrote his own chart note templates using visual BASIC script. In 2003 he became the physician champion for ENT of Georgia’s EMR implementation project. This included not only design and implementation strategy but also writing code. In 2008 the EMR implementation earned the e-Technology award from the Medical Association of Georgia.
With 7 years EMR experience, 18 years in private medical practice and over 35 years of IT experience, Dr. Koriwchak seeks opportunities to merge the information technology and medical communities, bringing information technology to health care.

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